Credit: Cardinal Films, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Mongrel Media
You never know when your life will end. Few think of it, really digest what it means to no longer be. Even fewer run toward it, chased by the dream of living on by doing one great thing that will cement them forever in history. It's a pretty damn small number more interested in legacy than safety that drives toward death as a stunt driver in a rocket car.
Credit A24
Walking into this movie, I had only heard Robert Pattinson's performance was top notch. Otherwise, I had little interest in the story of Chris Hanson, award winning journalist and host of To Catch a Predator, the show where he and his crew lured sexual predators to a fake address and confronted them on camera.
Anything can happen in the woods. You can be sitting and enjoying a nice fire when in stumbles a bit of trouble. Ethan Hawke's character learns that in The Weight, a new thriller from the minds that brought you… Holy s**t this is the director's and the writers' first movie (one writer has one other credit, but that's not really holy s**t worthy). I'll be honest, that lifts my estimations of this movie much higher.
image: Sony Pictures
When I say I understand how Bryan the medical courier feels trying to escape a plague of mutant zombies, you get what I mean. The new Resident Evil by Zach Cregger is a visceral splash of gore and tentacles right out of H.P. Lovecraft's dreams minus all the cats and puritanical racism. The film clips along at a brusque pace from a lone farmhouse to the empty Raccoon City without taking much of a breath. A hell of a good time at the movies.
A newsletter for the Banned Library’s birthday! The Banned Library opened many years ago. Some say it sprang forth fully formed from the head of a god, but those people are confusing the library with the Greek goddess Athena. No, we were spilled from a drunken bottle of whiskey onto a bar and soaked up by a rag and onto the internet in September 2010. Long shot from where we are now. Staff didn't even have smartphones when we started.
You had me at "set in the world of The Guest (2014)." Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett have been favorites of mine (and everyone who likes horror) since You're Next (2011), so to have them back again with supersoldiers attacking a desert trailer park feels great. Sort of a Tremors meets Shane Black with a dash of Evil Dead, our veteran sniper hero must defeat large odds while protecting a precocious young girl in this fun thriller full of chainsaws, cleavers, and odd ball characters. Check it out.
Credit: first eiditon, Delacorte Press
Swag, published in 1976 by Delacorte Press, begins the modern version of Leonard's bibliography. Before now, he'd written westerns and a few crime novels (I've been reading them the last few years). Swag has the same dark story of criminals doing crime and the police trying to catch them, but adds in a ton more levity and fun to the criminal acts. It's a fast read at around 225-250 pages depending on the edition, but it may take longer as everyone around you will ask what you are laughing at.
Credit: Mubi
I've made it a personal mission to never meet my heroes. The few times I have have been awkward as hell, from musicians to artists to comedians except the very rare times I never realized who I was talking to. In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a filmmaker gets to meet their hero and it goes pretty well, all things considered.
credit: Roadside Attractions and Saban Films
By the time Barney the dinosaur rose to prominence, I was well into lighting fires in the back yard and wondering why Kelly Jo Cochrane looked so good in her bathing suit. The dancing purple love machine was more the target of playground mocking than anything of substance. Buddy targets that mocking and asks the question "what if that mascot was a petty elder god bent on selfish destruction?"
credit: Universal Pictures
I went to the theater and paid good money to watch people fall in love and, dammit, that's what I got. Finding Emily is a generic title for a right down the middle romcom in the style of She's All That if it was mixed with Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist with a strange dash of PCU. Charming, funny, and overall a fun watch.
By http://www.impawards.com/2025/it_ends_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82428273
Stop me if you heard this one. A group of folks go off into the woods and find themselves lost in an existential horror. There's no hobbits or Blair Witches though, just a Jeep Cherrokee and a bunch of screaming people running out of the trees. What the movie lacks in originality it makes up for in acting and directing cause otherwise it would have been boring as shit.
By May be found at the following website: Vital Thrills, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82789334
Hell yeah we're gonna start with a dysfunctional family at a block party. Then a laser light show minus Pink Floyd comes along and dumps the neighborhood into a better Jurassic World sequel than the ones we got. These dinosaurs came to chew Bubblegum and kick ass, and only one cat in the neighborhood was named Bubblegum.
Over the last week I have been traveling around Italy, from Rome to Milan and up a bit into Switzerland's Lake Lugano. My god how easy it is to get around and how helpful and well dressed everyone seems to be. Of course, this close to the Assumption of Mary, most everyone was taking a vacation. Rome and Milan especially were full of empty shops and closed shutters as everyone ran from the heat of the city.
It's refreshing to see a beefy man going through puberty on the big screen. I have not seen such a thing since Jeff Goldblum started spitting on his food in The Fly. At least ole Spider-Man has the comforting presence of a soldier with PTSD to help him fight off a teenage telepath and a green hurricane of violence. Truly a brand new day for everyone involved.
The Count of Monte Cristo can suck a chrome bumper next to Motor City, the new near-silent movie from director Potsy Ponciroli about a man framed for a crime and fights tooth and nail to get his fiance back. It's all 70's style and music with Reacher star Alan Ritchson sporting several shaggy wigs before cutting down those locks to murder fools with shotgun shells full of loose change and an engagement ring. Hell hath no fury like a motherf**ker with nothing to lose.
A body face-down in a pool is cinematic language for "I've seen old movies, too." To open your movie that way and have your Norma Desmond bare ass is a bold statement, especially when you have no intention of paying that shit off.
Boat trip! Follow Odysseus and his crew of fuckwits as they wander around the Mediterranean for a bit meeting interesting people and dying in gruesome ways while back home a bunch of guys are eating Odysseus's food, trying to marry his wife, and plotting to kill his kid. This movie has everything including ear splitting rumbling sounds that will make you wonder "what did he say?"
The library is in the middle of Summer Reading and reviewing movies like The Furious!
This week we review a great book about depression and a life growing up with wild animals as well as finding out who's the master and if virtual storytime will be a thing.
The library talks The Hollow Man, Under Siege, and catches everyone up on what’s going on behind the stacks.
